San Jose, She Taunts Me

I spent last week up in San Jose again (my new position has many advantages over the old job, but the change-of-venue I've experienced regarding business trips back to the home office isn't one of them). My feelings toward the area haven't changed much from previous visits, but San Jose has improved itself since we lived there in ways that I choose to regard as a direct, personal taunt. Just recently San Jose has opened two new dog parks — one is a few hundred yards down the street from the office, and one is within easy walking distance from where we used to live!

Beyond lack of easy access to dog parks, an even more basic problem to living downtown was shopping — seeing downtown SJ (and perhaps rightfully so) as a blighted area, most merchants stayed the heck out, leaving us with a long trek away from home for anything outside of basic groceries. But now — now — they've built a regular shopoteria within casual reach of downtown, featuring all of the usual suspects: a Target, a Cost Plus, Petsmart, and (coming soon!) some type of Whole Foods-ish yupscale supermarket.

Of course, the neighborhood itself is still as rundown and overcrowded as ever. (The houses may cost $750,000, but the people are the same — are some new condo towers enough to save the Target-Cost Plus-Petsmart axis from becoming a ghost town if the economy goes south?) So while San Jose is trying its best, it's still not quite trying hard enough.

Still, all of this new stuff woulda been awful handy three or four years ago ...